Procrastination comes in many forms. Examples of disguised procrastination include:

• Taking multiple online courses
• Reading way too many books/articles
• Setting up the perfect productivity workflow
• Excessive note-taking
• Attending conferences/events
• Joining multiple communities

When you find yourself doing the above, ask yourself, are you avoiding real work?

Say your goal is to make music. You take multiple music courses, read articles on how to get better at making music, analyze great songs. But the real work is: make music.

Jakob Greenfeld tweeted: "Taking a course is oftentimes a form of procrastination because people feel like they need to take a course before they're 'allowed' or ready to start/create something."

Learn by doing. Practice just-in-time learning. Doing real work is hard, but it will help you reach your goal sooner than fake work could. Fake work gives us an illusion that we're making progress, without knowing we're further away from getting real results.

The next time we catch ourselves in disguised procrastination, let's remind ourselves to do the real work instead. If you're wondering, I spent days researching before writing this article. This morning I woke up and forced myself to simply just write. Guess what? It worked.

Now, go do the real work.

Love,

Rachel